How to Improve Your Mental Fitness with Joshua Lifrak, Limitless Minds: Show Notes & Transcript

In this episode of Strategic Counsel by ForthRight Business, we’re chatting with Joshua Lifrak about mental fitness. Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and your other favorite podcast spots – follow and leave a 5-star review!

• Episode Summary & Player
• Show Notes
• Strategic Counsel Summary
• Transcript

How to Improve Your Mental Fitness with Joshua Lifrak, Limitless Minds

We just launched our new book! You can grab The Power of Your Personal Brand: A Playbook for Struggling Middle Managers Who Want to Do Big Things on Amazon or at ForthRight-People.com

It is often said that one of the biggest indicators of success is mindset. Attributes like resilience, focus, and managing negative thoughts have long been heralded as the mental skills needed to achieve Big Things. Just like any skill, they can be acquired through practice. We wanted you to learn from an expert who knows all things mental fitness, so we welcomed on Joshua Lifrak. He’s the Author of WIN TODAY, and the Director of Performance & Coaching at Limitless Minds. Here’s a small sample of what you will hear in this episode:

• Culture and identity lay the foundation for mental fitness and resilience
• Importance of defining team identity and culture
• Lessons learned from pro sports about rapid transformation
• Using a growth mindset to frame mental training as a competitive advantage
• Power of intention-setting for how you want to show up each day

And as always, if you need help in building your Strategic Counsel, don’t hesitate to reach out to us at: ForthRight-People.com.

Check out the episode, show notes, and transcript below:

Show Notes

• How to Improve Your Mental Fitness with Joshua Lifrak, Limitless Minds
  • [0:29] Welcome to Strategic Counsel by ForthRight Business
  • [00:28] Introducing the topic of mental fitness and today’s guest Josh Lifrak
  • [01:25] Josh’s background working in professional sports with the Chicago Cubs and New York Mets
  • [02:52] Lessons learned from pro sports about rapid transformation
  • [04:16] Case study: Using mental skills training to help the 2016 Chicago Cubs break their 108-year World Series curse
  • [06:36] Importance of defining team identity and culture – who you want to be
  • [08:00] Deciding to be champions before winning the championship
  • [10:19] Changing the “lovable losers” identity by catching players doing things right and embodying “Cub” values
  • [12:12] Culture and identity lay the foundation for mental fitness and resilience
  • [13:36] Mental training became an integrated part of the Cubs’ daily routines
  • [15:33] Handling pushback and getting buy-in for mental training programs
  • [17:24] Using a growth mindset to frame mental training as a competitive advantage
  • [19:21] High achievers and top performers often need mental skills the most
  • [20:45] Tactical example: Helping a restaurant group align actions with stated values
  • [22:34] Living values through highlighting and measuring the right behaviors
  • [24:30] Power of intention-setting for how you want to show up each day
  • [26:44] Hiring, promoting and holding people accountable to values
  • [28:10] Importance of building bonds and lifting others up
  • [30:08] Organizational culture creates the environment for individual mental fitness
  • [31:03] Leaders’ role in providing clarity and consistency for their teams
  • [33:30] Over-communicating and verifying understanding as leadership essentials
  • [35:52] Concrete example of the Cubs’ “Respect 90” value in action
  • [37:16] Modulating communication style to be heard by different audiences
  • [38:10] Two tools for leaders’ mental fitness: getting present (You Are Here) and managing negativity (Stop The Storm)
  • [40:34] Dealing in facts and neutrality vs spiraling into negative stories
  • [43:27] Typical mental challenges faced by high-performing athletes and tools to address them
  • [45:47] Importance of routines to transition from preparation to performance mode
  • [48:38] The six key tools in Josh’s book WIN TODAY to set yourself up for daily success
  • [50:26] Mental fitness is personal – the tools need to be customized to the individual
  • [51:24] Key to mental fitness is staying consistent with small practices that compound over time
  • [53:14] Josh’s big goals: Maximize book reach and impact a billion people through his work with Limitless Minds
  • [54:36] Parting wisdom: A growth mindset turns scarcity into abundance and makes anything possible
  • The book The Power of Your Personal Brand is available on Amazon with a companion workbook
  • Make sure to follow Strategic Counsel on your favorite podcast spot and leave us a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts
  • Learn more at ForthRight-People.com and connect with us on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn

What is Strategic Counsel?

Welcome to Strategic Counsel by ForthRight Business! Prepare for honest, direct, and unconventional conversations on how to successfully lead and operate in business.  Referred to by some listeners as an “MBA in podcast form,” this show is dense with personal stories, proven strategies contextualized by practical steps, and tools to put what you learn into action now.

Your hosts Anne Candido and April Martini are Co-Founders of ForthRight People, a leadership performance company focused on developing leaders from the inside out. They are also Authors of the book: The Power of Your Personal Brand: A Playbook for Struggling Middle Managers Who Want to Do Big Things. They thrive on engagement from listeners and welcome any show topics!  So, reach out and connect!

Thanks for listening Strategic Counsel. Get in touch here to become more strategic. 

Transcript

Please note: this transcript is not 100% accurate.

00:01
Welcome to the Strategic Counsel by Forthright Business podcast. If you’re looking for honest, direct and unconventional conversations on how to successfully lead and operate in business, you are in the right place. In our discussions, we push on the status quo and traditional modes of thinking to reveal a fresh perspective. This unlocks opportunity for you, your team and your business. Now let’s get to it.

00:28
Welcome to the Strategic Counsel podcast. I am Anne Candido. And I am April Martini. And today we’re going to talk about mental fitness. Now it’s often said that one of the biggest indicators of success is mindset. So attributes like resilience and focus and managing negative thoughts have long been heralded as the mental skills needed to achieve big things. Yes. And many think that these attributes are big capital C characteristics. If you know our personal brand framework.

00:58
So sometimes you’re either born with them or you’re not born with them, but that’s actually not the case in this case. Resilience, focus, and managing negative thoughts are actually skills. And just like any skill, they can be acquired through practice, which should sound like good news to everyone who has felt trapped or tricked by their own mindset. Yes, which has seriously been all of us at one point or another, if we’re going to be totally honest, right?

01:25
So for this episode, we have brought on an expert who knows a lot about this topic and that’s Josh Lifrak, author of Win Today and director of performance and coaching at Limitless Mind. So Josh, do want to introduce yourself and give the listeners a bit of your story? Sure, April. Anne, thank you very much for having me on the pod today. I really, really appreciate it. My background is I worked in professional sports for upwards of 20 years. I started doing that in…

01:54
a famed IMG Academy down here in Burlington, Florida. I live in Sarasota, Florida. So I was there for 10 years from there. I went to your nemesis, the Chicago Cubs. But we do. We do love Chicago as a city, just maybe not the Cubs. Well, you for yourself, April. Well, I love Chicago as a city. There you go. love it. We started it up early here with the ladies. Look out. So, yeah, so I was lucky enough to move over to the Chicago Cubs and become part of their front office from

02:24
the time frame of 2014 to 2019. That is where we had a historic run where we ended up going to the National Trippie Chip League Series three times. then in 2016, we broke the 108-year curse and we won the World Series. Just a little mark in the world of sports history for us. So that was pretty amazing. From there, I went on to the New York Mets. And then in 2021, I left the professional sports world. I have a

02:52
two beautiful children and an amazing wife who I just never saw. I was on the road for 200 days plus a year. So I wanted to get off of that train and started working in the corporate space. I still work with athletes in different teams and things of that nature, but more or less I do it for myself. then, you know, from there, I wrote this book, Win Today. And it was really, I took a lot of the lessons that I had learned while I was

03:21
in professional sports. Professional sports itself is a very unique landscape, but there’s a lot of similarities to that corporate space as well. So I wanted to share the things that I learned in this world of elite athletes and elite performers and take that training that we have developed to help them build their resiliency, build their comeback ability, build their focus, build all those things.

03:49
and share them with a larger audience because one of the things you quickly learn in pro sports is that transformation doesn’t have to take a really long time. I think a lot of people think that transformation is 20, 30 years of hard work. Well, you could start transforming today. And I think that’s one of the biggest things that I saw, these guys who come in and maybe they had a bad day out there off the field. Maybe something happened outside, maybe they got caught in traffic, whatever.

04:16
And they would show up to the field and they would put on their superhero costume, i.e. their uniform, and they could change who they were being in a moment. And now they were focused, they were locked in, they were energized, whatever, and they could just kind of leave stuff outside of the clubhouse. So really cool. And that’s what I really talk about a lot is how you can do that in the book one today. I love it. Despite the fact it is a Cubs, I think we’re going to learn a lot today.

04:45
And the Mets, I didn’t know the part about the Mets. Well, nobody cares about the Mets, April. There’s a lot of people in New York, but other than that, you know, non Yankees fans. You’re not making any friends, Wow. Yeah, I’m really coming in hot, aren’t I? OK, let’s get into the meat of the conversation. Josh, let’s start with that case study specifically when you were talking about the training that you did and how you helped the 2016 Chicago Cup World Series team.

05:15
Talk to us more about what that was like. How did you use the training to really train the brain, train the mindset, and how did that become the powerful tool that you thought was a linchpin in that win? Yeah, so just a couple things with that team, and it’s been highly documented other places, but I just want to make sure that everybody knows, like, I was one small

05:43
piece of that there. so many people that were involved in that 2016 when um there’s a there’s a phrase if you if you want to go fast, you go alone. If you want to go far, you go together. The companies, everybody in that organization was on board from the business side to the charity side to the baseball ops to the analytics to the managers, the coaches, the player development, the scouting. Every single person was rolling the boat the right direction, right?

06:11
And so that’s the first thing. The second thing was this. I started there in 2014. I was hired in August of 2014. And the first thing I did was I went around to every single affiliate and every single kind of like entity that was the Chicago Cubs. And I interviewed the people and I wanted to find out what it meant, like what was the culture? What does it mean to be a Cub?

06:36
And we’re talking about interviewing everybody from, you know, the trainers and physical conditioning coaches in the Dominican Republic all the way through Chicago, right? The whole gamut from South Bend to, you know, Knoxville, Tennessee, to wherever the affiliates were. And what we found out um really quickly was that we did not have a really good identity about who we wanted to be.

07:04
And this was this is crucial, right? And I talked about this in Wednesday and define your story. One of the first steps that you have to do to have success in transformation is define who you want to be. And so once we figured out that nobody really knew, we were like, awesome, because now we get to define that we get to define what it means to be a cup. Up to that point, it was a default setting, right? Where it was like lovable losers, right? That’s

07:31
literally what the Cubs were called internally and externally with the Lovable Losers. And so, you we had to change that identity. And that was one of the first, first things we did to make sure mentally that we had a different, a different lens on who we were. And I think that’s one of the big things when we talk about the corporate space is who are you going to be today? Who are you going to be on that sales call? Who are you going to be in that meeting? Who are you going to be when you’re talking to your board? Who are You know, who are you?

08:00
And how does that impact what you do? So those were some of the big questions we had to ask and answer at the same time. And once we started answering them, you know, it was like a rocket ship. We brought on Joe Madden in 2015. Joe was all in with everything we were talking about, added his own spice and flavor to it. And then, man, that cake got baked. And off we were.

08:23
Yeah, well, you’re definitely speaking our language today because we’re big on saying if you don’t define your brand yourself, others will do it for you, right? And when you end up in that default setting space, it’s a super dangerous place to be because you’re trying to live up to something that isn’t meaningful on one side, but already exists. And like your example doesn’t necessarily have a positive impact or any sort of rallying cry for folks, right? So I would love if you could take us through what did that look like to rebuild that?

08:52
Right? Obviously you did the groundwork and also speaking our language on that front, going in, speaking to everybody, listening first, all of that kind of stuff, doing the research. But from there, how did you help support the transformation? How did you get them to the other side? What does that process look like? Yeah. So honestly, it’s not as hard as you think it is. It can happen again. Transformation can happen pretty quickly. The first thing we started doing is within the world of player development, which is just for those listeners who are not familiar with baseball.

09:22
There’s a major league team that’s 25 guys during the regular season. think I think it’s I think they have a little bit more. I think it might be 2627 now, but at the time I was working there with 25 guys and it could expand to 40 in the late late in the season. But there’s 25 gentlemen there and then below that from there’s AAA AA single A high high A single A rookie League Dominican Republic all those types of things. So so that’s there’s 300 players there.

09:49
And what we decided to do was in that realm first, we were going to change what it meant to become. And the way that we do that is we looked at the actions that we wanted to illustrate what it meant to become. so years and years and years had gone by, 107 at that point, where if you did something wrong on the field, if you messed up, if you kicked the ball and had an error in the eighth inning and it let in the winning run, if you

10:19
Walked a guy if you struck out with the bases loaded that people would be. Oh, that’s so come right. People in Chicago would say that. that’s so come right because they were in love with losers and something bad was going to happen to him. And so the first thing that we did was we changed that and we said anytime anybody does something good. The coaches, the staff, the other players were going to call it out and say, hey man, that’s come right there. A guy sprints down the first base on a slow road and serve base. Oh man, that’s come right there.

10:47
guy hits the right cutoff man from the outfield. That’s cub right there. A guy breaks off a slider and strikes out a guy with the bases loaded. Hey, that’s so cub, right? So that’s the first thing. So we started calling him, hey, that’s cub, be cub. The second thing was we had a phrase internally that better people make better cubs. And so anytime a athlete or a person in the organization did something that was

11:13
for the community, for the rest of the team, selfless. They volunteered at the Miracle League. They cleaned up the dugout afterwards. They started a foundation for first responders. Whatever it is, we would call that out too. Hey man, that’s so cub right there of you to do that. That’s really cub. And now all of a sudden, you know, the players took it over and we knew it was sticking when they started calling each other out for not being cub. You’re late to the field. Oh man, that’s not cub right there, bro. Come on, clean it up. You know.

11:42
Stuff like that. So that’s that’s how it went on. That’s how we kind of started it. And then we made it an acronym CUB. C meant the courage to do the right thing because it’s hard to do the right thing. So it takes courage. You urgency to get it done right here right now and then B belief, the belief not only in ourselves, but in the team, in the organization and that we were on a mission and this is going to happen. I love it. I really do, because it’s such a fundamental

12:12
need to establish culture in order to build anything. So you’re specifically talking about transformation and how that led to transformation. We talk about that as being kind of the fundamental pieces of even your, if you want to call it your personal culture, so your personal brand and having that foundation by which to grow in the confidence by which to show up and how you’re going to show up and how you’re consistently going to show up. And that starts to breed

12:39
an ecosystem that just kind of feeds on itself, right? And that’s kind of what we call culture. So I’d love if you could speak a little bit more about then how this culture really led to this mental fitness, this mental resilience, like how did this shift mindset and how did that then ultimately lead to the success that we saw? A couple of things about a shift in mindset. It doesn’t happen by accident, right? A friend of mine always used to say, you know, the person at the top of the mountain didn’t just end up there.

13:08
They had to do something to get up to the top of the mountain. this is what I described in the book are these six steps and these six really, really key tools and activities that you can do on a daily basis to shift that mindset. And that’s what we did in Chicago is we just made mental training part of what we did. It was just part of the day. wasn’t like at that time in 2014, it was kind of on the cusp. There was like

13:36
Some people were like, oh, the guy’s all messed up. They got to go see the sports psych and da da da. But, but we had kind of started shifting that balance to, you don’t have to be sick to get better. And if you’re a beast, you can get beastier. So here we go. Here are things that you can do individually and organizationally to up level your ability to focus, whether that be visualization, whether that be what we call the can do method where, you know, you’re looking at yourself and you’re saying, okay, what are the actions that I need?

14:05
to take the knowledge that I’ve just learned and make it go, right? Because knowledge by this action equals absolutely nothing, right? So what’s the actions that I need to do, whether it be meditation, when we talk about, got all the, by the time I left the Chicago Cubs, we had 80 % of all the players doing some sort of mindfulness meditation at least once a week. It was ridiculous that I couldn’t believe it when I saw the statistics that we had done so well to get that out there.

14:35
You know, that’s key. Like you are here is one of the big steps that I talk about in the book, where it’s about how do you get present right here right now? How do you be where your feet are? Because that’s where that’s where performance occurs. That doesn’t you know, there’s things that happen in the past. There’s things that are going to happen in the future, but performance always occurs in the here and the now, right? We like to say I’m limitless minds all the time. You know, you don’t the past is not predictive of the future. What you think and what you do in the here and now is.

15:03
So that was one of the big things too, was there was this acceptance that, hey, I’m coming into this organization. I’m a college kid. You know, I just left my junior year. I got drafted. Oh wait, what are they doing? Oh, we do this thing called mental training. We visualize, we breathe. We have uh power phrases that we use. We go over our performances afterwards. We have an after action review where we look at what we did well, what we’re gonna do better, you know, what we learned. We’re gonna journal like.

15:33
Oh, okay. That’s just what everybody does. Okay, that’s what we do. And so that’s how that’s how we get it. Okay, so there had to be some mess in there somewhere, right? First, I will say, I love it. I’m shocked by the 80 % metric. I mean, that just completely blows me away. So obviously, you got there. But I would love to hear a little more about where there was pushback or struggle or even questions asked, right? Like,

16:00
or a particular player, maybe that was an all-star that really didn’t wanna buy into this. I don’t know what that looks like, right? But just to help people understand that it is a journey. And then also my second question to this was, was it based on the individual selecting what tools worked best for them, right? So what level of customization? So kind of a two-part, but just would love some more thoughts there. Yeah, April, great question.

16:26
Yes, your answer is yes. uh There was absolutely mess. There was absolutely guys who were just like this isn’t for me. Whatever I’m going to do my own thing and there were people that were completely and totally in right there. I think anytime you’re introducing anything that involves behavior change, there’s going to be 20 % of the people that are all in. There’s going be 20 % of the people that are all out and then there’s that messy middle and that’s the key is how do get that middle and what we saw over and over and over again was the best athletes.

16:55
the guys that were doing the best at baseball, skip, you know, pitching, hitting, running, whatever. Those were the guys that leaned in the most. was really, it was really amazing. So like the hall of famers, the guys that, you know, were the big studs and the major, major moments, they were the ones who were all in on the mental side. They understood, Hey, listen, talent runs out. So I need something else. I need a little bit more than the other guy. And

17:24
They saw it as a competitive advantage. Mental training was a competitive advantage. And I think when you frame it that way, April, that allows people to recognize, there’s nothing wrong with me. This is just something that can get me better. And yes, I can choose what I use and what I don’t use. These are professionals. Mind you, some of them are 19, 20 years old, but they’re professionals. It doesn’t matter. And this is their career. So it’s their choice always what they’re going to use. And I think that that was one of the big things too.

17:55
I talk about this in the book. It’s a chapter called choose growth. And what we also hit the athletes with educationally early on was Carol Dweck’s growth mindset. Oh yeah. No, like we, we recognized early on that if you’re going to just, you know, rely on your talent, it’s not going to work for you. And so here’s this thing called growth mindset. Here’s how you grow on a daily basis. And you know,

18:25
We’re here to help you. Our whole philosophy was education, application support. We’re gonna educate you on the tools. We’re gonna help you apply it if you want it and we’re gonna support you no matter what. So that was kind of what it was too. And I think, you you asked the question, like, was it messy? Absolutely. There are guys that you just love that just didn’t make it for whatever reason. There was guys that you were frustrated with that went right to the top. And that is what it is.

18:51
Right. Our job isn’t to determine that our job is to support them as far as they they want to go. So, yeah, was it there’s definitely some a ton of failures in baseball. There’s failures all over the place. And there were a ton of successes, too. And we were really, really, really lucky to be surrounded by incredible people in that organization for, you know, from 2014 to 2018. We just had the best people ever in there. And it was an honor and privilege to work there and tell you that. I mean, how interesting

19:21
is it that it’s the top performers, the high achievers, the go-getters who need this the most. And it’s a thing that me and April have noticed too. mean, our whole business, 4th Way People has been repositioned to developing high performing leaders from the inside out because it does tend to be something systemic. And for some reason, they carry a lot with them, right?

19:47
And that’s a lot to unpack sometimes. mean, especially if it is, um, and you feel like, you know, the weight of the world is on your shoulders a little bit to carry the team, or you feel that within yourself that you have those high expectations of yourself. So I love Josh, if you can get a little bit tactical, you give us a lot of really good tools in the context of some of your stories. Can you get a little tactical? Of course you don’t have to name names, but, oh, there’s some, some circumstances of like,

20:16
problem and then or maybe challenge and how you use some of the tools to address some of the challenges you saw with regards to mental fitness. Just give, could you give us just a couple of those stories and it’s kind of a tactical so people can really kind of visualize what that means? Sure. I’m going to, I’m going to get outside of baseball for this answer and I’m going to, I’m going to talk about a, um, a group that I work with that is, uh, they own hospitality. So they own a bunch of

20:45
different restaurants. And the goal of the organization was to have all the restaurants feel the same. I don’t know if you’ve ever been to uh a Marriott hotel, I recently looked at my Marriott status and I spent about six years in Marriott hotel. I have a lot of experience with them. My husband’s the same. Yeah, there you go. Right. It is what it is. They’re everywhere. So it helps out but AC Marriott, they came out with this channel a little bit ago. And one of the things they did at AC Marriott was really interesting is they had

21:14
a very specific scent curated for them that they would, you know, release into the lobbies and stuff. So as soon as you walk in to any AC Marriott in the entire world, it smells exactly the same. Right. And I think what this organization wanted to do was they wanted to have the feel of every single restaurant, although there were individual entities and they looked different because they were spread out throughout the cities was they wanted them to feel the same.

21:43
And they wanted them to make sure that, hey, our values that we adhere to are being activated. They’re not just words on a wall. How many organizations have you gone into and they have values on the thing? And you go, hey, what are the values? And nobody knows. But you know what’s so funny too is they’re always the same. Integrity! Yeah, you’re right.

22:05
But nobody knows what that means. They’re just kind of words on a wall. You’re going to get April started on it. I I’m like, can feel myself getting hot. I’m like, let Josh talk. He’s the guest. there you go. You get fired up April. That’s so funny. Ann was the fiery one because she was ripping on Chicago the whole time. Now when you’re talking about values and organizational development, that’s April’s space. So yeah, she gets hot about that. There you go. So this organization had great values and they were starting to live them. They weren’t quite there yet.

22:34
Like they weren’t quite there yet. So the whole thing was like, how do we use tools of the mental skills to help them really cultivate these values in a way that they’re going to be actionable. And the thing that we saw was intention. And I talked about this right off the bat and define your story in setting an intention and what is an intention. Well, an intention is a deciding on how you want to be today. Right. And so

23:03
What we learned was that the GMs and the people who running the individual stores were not deciding who they were going to be or how it was going to go that day. They were just reactive. They were completely reactive to the circumstance. And in the restaurant business, you are going to be reactive throughout service no matter what, because it’s the customer that’s defining stuff. However, you can define how you’re going to be and decide that early on. So what we did was we had them choose one of the values every day.

23:32
to talk about with their staff and how that was going to translate to their being on the floor or in the kitchen. And so that was one of the ways we talk. Like I said, I call it define your story and it’s living by design versus living by default. So one of the things, one of the really tactical tools that leaders can use or people listening to this can use is just taking a when and aware to decide your intention on how you’re going to be today. Not what you’re going to do.

24:01
not what you’re going to accomplish. I think a lot of people think that, oh, I’m going to set the intention and then give make a list of all the things that got to get done that day. Well, that’s fine. You can make that list of all the things you got to get done, but then take one step backwards from that and go, who am I going to have to be in order to accomplish those things? I’m going to be focused. I’m going to be intentional. I’m going to be energized. I’m going to be curious. I’m whatever it might be. Deciding that first is so crucial.

24:30
Because then you’re doing will kind of like you’re just going to fall in line with what you’re doing. We did. We did that in Chicago as well. We decided to be champions ever even before we were the world champions that we decided that late 2014. One of my rules was to rewrite the manual for the Cubs way the mental section and the last section of that I wrote basically a paragraph about what it means to be a champion and how we have to decide we’re going to be champions before we can ever win a championship.

24:59
That is outlined in the book and it’s also outlined in Tom Purgue’s Cubs waybook. Yeah, I mean, this is another place, like I said, I was like, just wait your turn. Where we talk a lot about this too. So we always talk about different words, but operating principles, rules of engagement and values and how they all work together. Right. So similarly, it’s

25:21
The culture of the organization, what do those values actually mean? They’re not on a sheet of paper, they’re not on the wall, they’re actually things people repeat and can say, and they’re culturally relevant to the way you speak to each other, all those things. And then the operating principles and rules of engagement are where overall, this is how, as an organization, we’re gonna show up, and then for each individual, what does that mean? And I love the idea of activating that every single day in order to have an intention for each person so that they feel like they have ownership to show up within it.

25:51
One of the other things we talk about is hiring, firing and retaining based on all of these things, right? So I would love to Anne’s point about more tactical getting into, and I don’t mean to be the dissenter here, because I actually love this topic, but when things don’t go well, or how do you use it to not just build what you want for the culture, but then weed out what doesn’t work and making that not a disruptive process as you do it, right? Or something that stops the momentum. Great question, April. The whole thing,

26:20
for me, especially within the world of the corporate space is, okay, if we’re gonna live these values, we have to measure them. And then we have to reward and hold people accountable to them. So how often are people promoted from sales to like managers just because they were good at selling?

26:45
Great. If that’s the value of the company, if the value say make a ton of cash and that’s on the wall, great. Then you’re living that. But if the value is saying, you know, development, lift others up, you know, those types of things, then are we moving the right people up? You know, that’s a question to kind of ask yourself. So and are we supporting them as we’re doing that, right? Giving them the tools to be able to go from salesperson to manager. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And training that leadership style and

27:14
and all those types of things, right? Just because you’re good at selling doesn’t mean you’re going to be good at lifting others up. That’s there. In terms of your question, the tactics, that organization I just talked about, they have had their fifth, so I started working with them 2021 to 2026. They’ve had their fifth consecutive record year of profits. So that’s pretty awesome. They just celebrated their 25th year in existence, but

27:42
the last five years after COVID have been their most financially abundant, which is awesome. And I think that that’s one of the things too, to kind of think about is abundance versus scarcity. When we walk into a situation and we’re thinking with scarcity, we typically don’t build bonds. And I talk about this is one of the big steps in the book is, and when today is building bonds, like

28:10
connect with others to have those moments where you are learning from others, helping them out, supporting them. They’re supporting you and you’re going through something together and you’re lifting each other up. That is so, so crucial. So one of the things that we know in terms of value systems and making them live is you got to highlight when people are doing the values well, you have to catch them winning, call it. Catch them winning.

28:39
And what that ends up doing then is as you’re catching those people winning those, those process orientation things, right? Cause that’s what they are valued. They’re a process. And so if you’re catching them winning those things, what they’re going to do is first of all, they’re going to get highlighted for that. But then they’re also going to kind of lean on others and let them know, Oh yeah, this is how I did. Cause that’s what happens when somebody wins. People want to know how they did that. they’re like, Oh, you’re being highlighted. Well, what were you doing? And then boom, now all of sudden they’re talking with each other.

29:09
And it’s not like this silo of just goodness. It’s propagated across the organization. So that’s one of the big things that I’ve seen is just catch them winning. when you catch them winning, would loudly do it publicly. And if you’re holding them, I don’t know, I don’t wanna use the word accountable because that’s the wrong word, but like if they’re not doing it and you need them to do it, that’s a silent, that’s a one-on-one conversation, a silent conversation about that. I don’t embarrass them in front of the Yeah, don’t embarrass them.

29:38
This, think is such an important conversation. I want to kind of connect some dots here because as people are listening, they may be wondering what does organizational development have to do with mental fitness, right? Or, you know, what values really have to do with mental fitness? What does building a culture really have to do with mental fitness? And I said a little bit before, but I want to kind of bring it back again and to connect those dots, because what you’re listening to is basically the playbook for how to establish a

30:08
system, a process, an environment that allows you to have mentally fit people, right? Because that is what you need. You need to have that structure. That structure provides the baseline for everybody to know how am I supposed to operate within the system? What are the expectations of me? And so therefore I know how to be successful. So therefore, if there is a system of, you you called it like being a cub or in this case, it was oh catching them winning. It’s like,

30:37
when you’re reinforcing that in people, and this is the leaders to the people, you’re building their mental fitness. They know, they’re starting to know then what success looks like. And so then when something doesn’t happen, it doesn’t become necessarily the biggest disaster or pitfall that it could be because you can come back to a place of what success looks like, because everybody knows what success looks like. So…

31:03
I want people to kind of really understand that, you know, this is like a dynamic across the spectrum, but you need the baseline in order to be able to have those conversations with people. Otherwise, it just ends up being super arbitrary. And then people are left on their own to try to like dig down within themselves and try to figure out, well, how am I going to be strong today? How am I going to overcome this chaos? How am I going to overcome a boss who’s like this one day and like this another and is totally inconsistent?

31:32
How do I overcome versus as leaders? And we’ve been kind of going back and forth between the I and the leader versus the leaders about how do I establish a uh ecosystem, an environment that allows me to have mentally fit people? So maybe Josh, you can kind of riff on that a little bit and kind of speak to how these things kind of connect. then how, since we’re kind of on the leader track, how can leaders be more intentional about creating a mentally fit team?

32:02
points and uh the thing that jumps out at me as you were talking is I just kept hearing this phrase in my head, clarity equals kindness and clarity equals velocity. if like I just got done last year, I worked with a Indy car, Indy car racing. These guys drive 240 miles an hour around Indianapolis Speedway. And it was really interesting because they have these these windshields that they rip off.

32:30
They’re like, they like kind of can stick them on. And one of the drivers, they had put it on and it created a blind spot for him and he couldn’t see. they were like, he did a lap and he came back in there like, man, that was a really slow lap. Is the car okay? And it was like, I can’t see. I can’t see how the sides of the car. We gotta rip that off. I’m not gonna go smashing it to a wall. So if you have clarity and people know where they’re going and how they’re supposed to act, they can manage themselves to get there. Like what you described there too about

33:00
Hey, I don’t know what the leader’s gonna be like today, right? That’s the biggest challenge is if you don’t know what you’re getting, like consistency from leadership is so crucial to success. Just who am I getting today? What am I gonna be held accountable to? Does this person have integrity? Like all those pieces are so, so huge to help.

33:30
performers. And that’s, what the people are people are performers, right? And so but if I walk into an environment, and I don’t know what’s in them, I’m gonna like tiptoe it. I’m not gonna jump in the lake, I’m gonna tiptoe, I don’t know what’s going on there, right? And so that I think that’s kind of what you’re hitting that and I think what can leaders do communicate? communicate clearly over and over and over again.

33:55
um One of my good friends, a gentleman named Darren McMeans uh works at a place called Reliaquest, which is internet security. And he talks about in their leadership, they say, if you said it once, you’ve never said it. I love that, right? If you said it once, you’ve never said it. How many times do you, I don’t know how many leaders, you know, have you talked to where they’re like, they just don’t get it. I told them, well, I told them that’s not enough. Not only do you have to tell them,

34:25
You have to hear back from them that they understand. And no, you have to hear back from them that they understand. You have to understand. I have to ask that next question to make sure that they understand. Right. Yes is not an answer. Yes, I understand. No. Okay. Prove it to me. You know, like I had, I have limitless minds. The company I work with, we have our own podcast. got ladies, I’m going to have you on sooner or later to say no. Um, limitless minds podcast and

34:53
We had a woman on who was from the CIA. She was an operative from the CIA. She is retired, but she would go into countries where basically she wasn’t allowed to throw her at her face. All right. And so, and she would have to cultivate uh assets to help them oh to get information about what the United States government needed. And she has a phrase and the phrase in the CIA is this, trust and verify. So trust up outwardly.

35:23
But then you have to verify you got to verify and you got to verify. And that’s the same thing for leaders. You can trust that your people have understood what you’re saying, but you better verify. Because if you don’t verify, then you’re assuming and when you’re assuming, you know, makes an asset of you and me, right? Then you’re to go down this road of like, Oh no, one of the things we did do at the Cubs was we never assumed we had very specific markers that we could track and look at. One of them was very simple from Joe Madden. was called respect 90.

35:52
and it was running from home plate to first base. Are we going to run hard or are we going to walk? You know, like are you going to put your head down and get frustrated or are you just going to do what you’re to do and get down there and get down to first base as fast as you can? So it was a really easy thing to monitor and it was a really easy value to to help us uphold. And you know the guys, if they didn’t respect 90, they found themselves on the bench the next day. It was really simple with my son’s team. Right now we’re saying stop watching the ball.

36:22
I’m going to implement respect 90, although they’re not getting it on our fields. was crazy in spring training. We painted it out on the field. So it was right there next to the first baseline. That’s amazing. Guys couldn’t miss it. Again, we’re in agreement on the leadership front. We see this all the time with the teams we work with point taken on the, said it once you didn’t actually say it, right? I love that too because

36:48
I mean, even in branding and marketing, right, Anne and I are like, historically people needed to hear something seven to 10 times before they even realized that they heard it. It’s probably even more now with all the noise we live with, right? So yes, that message needs to be reinforced. But one of the other things we talk to people a lot about is it doesn’t matter if you say the right thing, if they don’t hear it, right? So like for me, I do a lot of executive coaching and a lot of the organizational development work and I’m a very direct person typically.

37:16
But if I have someone who can’t hear my level of directness, what am I doing, right? Then I fail as the coach or the leader in the situation because I haven’t modulated myself in order for them to be able to hear that. So that’s just one of kind of the leadership things that came to mind as you were talking. But I would love to, again, point to you of continuing on the leadership path. What kinds of things do you do with the leader specifically?

37:42
to help them, whether it’s like the best athlete on the team who’s the one everybody looks to, right? Or in a corporate environment, it’s like the bosses to help them understand that role. Because what we find is it is tricky, especially if they’re in a new leadership role or they’ve never managed before, because you can be the most mentally strong person, but you enter a new role you’ve never done and you question yourself, right? Even the best people do. So how do you help people work through that in that specific instance?

38:10
Because like we say with the high achievers, right? They run, run, run. And then all of a sudden the doings doesn’t work anymore and they don’t know what to do. So two things really, really jump out at me that we do. Well, I just flew back. I was in I was in Philadelphia yesterday. So I just flew back home last night. And, you know, you get on the plane and the first thing they tell you is, you know, put the oxygen mask on yourself before you put it on somebody else. You’re not going to tell me you’re an Eagle’s fan on top of everything else, are you? Oh, God, no. Oh, thank God.

38:39
So anyway, putting the oxygen mask on yourself, right? There’s several ways that I outline in the book, but two of the biggest ones are you are here and stop the storm. Okay, so are two chapters in there, but you are here. It’s all about getting present. And it’s not even so much about getting present. It’s really about amplifying your power of noticing. And what people think

39:06
about meditation, whatever you think about it. But most people think it’s like you cross your legs, you enlighten your 45th chakra, you start levitating. There’s like lots of incense burning. That is certainly one form of meditation. But the meditation that I learned and we taught the Cubs players was a meditation of noticing. And really what it was, was just kind of like dead lifts for your mind and it was about focusing.

39:35
And so what you would do is you would focus on your breath. That was your intention. You would get distracted from that within about five seconds. And then you would notice that you’ve gotten distracted and then you would reorient back. And I think that loop over and over and over again, trains your mind to notice things. And so that’s the biggest thing. You talked about leaders modulating themselves and that is huge, right? Because if I can modulate myself and I can make sure that I’m here and I’m present.

40:05
Then I’m going to approach conversations from a place of curiosity versus judgment. And if I can be curious, then I can really be present and learn from the person that I’m talking to. And I’m having conversations about listening to understand versus listening to explain. That’s the number one thing. So how do I get present? How do I notice? How do I notice if I’m not focused? How do I draw myself back into number one?

40:34
Number two is stop the storm. And what stop the storm is all about is getting away from negativity. We’re going to have negative things happen in our life that that happens. We’re to have negative thoughts. We’re going to have negative opinions. We’re going to have negative judgments, whatever it is. Negativity is just going to happen. It’s it’s it’s it’s part of being a human being. It’s called the negativity bias in psychology. It’s it’s a program, a system in our brain to help keep us alive. Right. So.

41:03
It’s the fighter flight type stuff, right? And so that’s there and we’re combating that to thrive. And so here I am and I’m having some negative thoughts and most people think the opposite of negative is positive. It’s not really that and it’s really tough, right? If you’re negative going to reverse like you’re in a car that’s negative and you’re going to reverse and somebody say, hey, get positive and you jam it in the drive like you’re going to blow out. gotta go and how about it? By the way, in the history of somebody.

41:31
telling you, just be positive or hey, calm down. How many times has that actually worked? Makes the negativity worse. Yeah, does. then you’re just like, oh, shut up. What are you talking about? Right? Like it goes the exact opposite way. And so what we found, and we talk about this in Limitless Minds that I described in the book and Stop the Storm, is this middle ground called neutrality. And what neutrality is, is dealing with the facts without judging or grading them.

42:00
Right. Another way to put that is dealing with what’s so without creating a giant story behind it. Because we do we get a lot because that’s what we do. We’re human beings. We want to create stories. Right. There’s this thing called the Heider Simmel effect. And basically what it said is is human. It’s experiment done years and years ago. But basically what they found was that in uncertainty, people create stories. That’s that’s their go to like something that doesn’t make sense. And

42:29
Roll back to the beginning of our conversation clarity equals velocity clarity equals kindness, right? So if I know what i’m But if I but if i’m in this uncertain place, I haven’t been communicated with I don’t know how i’m doing i’m going to create a story in my brain Right and guess what check this out. We always find what we look for and if we’re geared towards negativity If we’re geared towards negativity, how are the stories going to be? When I don’t know what’s going on. They’re typically going to be negative and now here I am as a leader

42:58
I’ve created uncertainty. I’m not present. I don’t know what’s going on. And, you know, we’re pretty negative. So how do we stop that? It’s a neutral place. What are the facts? What am I dealing with? Does not have a judgment about it. What’s the best next step that I can move forward from? And now that I know that, let’s be really, really, really, really clear about it so people know what to do. I’m so glad you took it back to the eye because I wanted to go back there again, too, because we’ve now we’ve kind of like circled. have the leaders.

43:27
Well, we had the foundation, we had the leaders and now we’re kind of come back to the eye. And I want to go back to the other insight just to bring back the sports piece a second, which was that the high achievers, the people who are really, really good at their sport, the high performers are tend to be who need this the most. And that’s exactly like I said, what April and I have noticed as well.

43:52
And you might have been sprinkling some stories about folks amongst all of the discussion, but I love just to kind of hit it hard for those who are listening to, for those high performers, for those people who are like sitting there struggling a little bit with their mental fitness, what are some typical patterns that you see among those high performers? And can you give some practical tools for people to go and address those?

44:19
So I’ll give you, I’ll give you a really good example of this. There’s a gentleman named Stevie Johnson. Stevie J was at the University of Southern California. He was the, he is the, he is the most highly decorated college tennis player of all time. He ended up being top 20 in the world on the men’s tour. But when Stevie was at USC, he went 72 and oh, he won 72 tennis matches at a division one level in a row. That’s insane. It’s impossible. And Stevie.

44:49
And I knew each other from when he was a freshman. And so we have lots of conversations and one of the conversations we had was. You know everybody thinks this is easy. This is some of the hardest stuff I’ve ever done because I have so many expectations on me and I’m getting pulled in all these different directions because now he’s throwing out first pitches and he’s flipping the coin at the football games in front of 90,000 people and like he’s kind of a star. He’s in the Hall of Fame there at USA, right? So I mean you’re talking about the same Hall of Fame that has.

45:19
you know, world-class track and field athletes. USC was like the 15th best country in the Summer Olympics. Like that’s, you know, the level of athlete they have there. So here he was and he was dealing with all that stuff and he was getting pulled in all these different directions. And so what it was for us was having a really clear routine that would differentiate like public life from athletic life. And so here I am Stevie, Stevie Johnson.

45:47
out there in the world at USC being a student doing what I’m doing out there. And then what I would get to the locker room. I would take some time to breathe. I would visualize what I’m going to go out there and do. I would kind of get myself reset, remind myself of my goals for today on the tennis court. And then I would go and it was a way to stop the day and start the game. Right. And I think that that’s one of the things that that elite performers can do is they can recognize, okay, once it’s time to start playing.

46:16
Right? Whatever. And I say playing as a performer. When’s the time to start performing today? Because there is also preparation. We know this, right? You don’t just walk into a sales call. You don’t just get in front of the board and just start riffing. I mean, that would be like, that’s kind of like me. I just improv a lot. So, you know, like, but like, typically don’t do that. You’re going to prepare separation from preparation. So when do you stop preparing? And when do you start, when you start playing and knowing that is really, really crucial.

46:46
I worked with a gentleman named Ken Revizo. Kenny was the godfather of sports psychology in the world of baseball. And Kenny used to always talk about when does one pitch end and the next pitch begin. And he always talked about it begins before it begins. And I think those two things are really, really crucial for elite performers is recognizing you got to get ready to be ready. And when you can do that and you take that time early on, you have a good routine there.

47:13
And it could involve things like visualization. could involve things like affirmations. It could involve things like taking five minutes to breathe and kind of just get centered. Those are all tools that you can certainly use to do that. I love what you said at the beginning about the fact that these guys, the really elite ones especially, but can come in and have had a bad day outside and they put the uniform on, right? And they’re able to make that transition. But I think what we just heard is the way in which they make it.

47:42
Right? So what do they do as they’re physically getting ready in the locker room or same goes for leaders, right? Like what are these things that you need for yourself to prepare and making sure that you build the routine in that? Because the other pieces you said, and I can’t remember the tennis player’s name and as Ann knows, I’m terrible with names anyway, but the fact that people think it’s easy, right? And what we heard is yes, the tactical of how do you go and do this?

48:08
but also the fact that it has to be a very intentional routine that you do for yourself to put yourself in the mindset to go and do whatever that looks like for you, corporate or sports. Because I think that’s where the misnomer happens. Like, that professional baseball player just has that talent. No, he has done the mental work to be strong enough to be able to show up consistently again and again in that way. It’s not that he’s just born with it. Absolutely. Or she.

48:38
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. And I think that’s, you know, that’s what I was trying to get done in this book. The book is called Win Today. So you can win every day. And the way that you do that is you go through these six steps. And if you accomplish four out of the six, you got a good chance of winning. You know, so that’s the whole key is that, you know, the steps that I outline in the book, you know, define your story, build bonds, you are here, stop the storm, choose growth and mile zero. These are all very

49:08
clear mental tools that you can use on a daily basis. I just set you up for success. They don’t guarantee you success, but they set you up for it. love this as a way to kind of segue into closing us out because I want to want everybody to hear is that regardless if you were on a baseball field or you’re in some sort of corporate boardroom, if you will, we’re all performers.

49:32
Like we’re all performing in some way, right? And so when we can embrace that about ourselves, that starts to put us in a different mindset already that we do need that training. We do need that practice. And I know there’s some people who are going to be frustrated by this episode because we didn’t like specifically say, well, what’s how do I fix a mindset of imposter syndrome? How do I fix a mindset? You know, and all the things that people feel. And that’s because it’s personal.

49:59
You guys, it’s personal. so I think Josh did a really great job. You did a really good job of listing some of the tools that people use. But for each individual person, depending on how your mind is built, how it’s constructed, what you’re facing, the tools you’re going to need are going to be customized for you in order to build your mental fitness. So this is the start of the conversation. This isn’t the magic bullet by any stretch. So I don’t want people to be like,

50:26
but you didn’t tell me this. Well, if you want to know that, then you need to come talk to Josh. You need to come talk to me. You need to come talk to April. We’ll help put together the plan for you that’s going to help you build your mental fitness, whether you want to do it from through your personal brand lens or what do you want to do it through the lens that Josh goes through too. I mean, there’s multiple different ways of being able to achieve this mental fitness. And you’ve just heard a bunch here today. Like what you talking about there is the steps aren’t difficult.

50:55
They’re just, you just got to stay consistent with them over and over and over again. you, because when you do the work on yourself, the work starts working on you. And I think that’s one of the big keys is that you nailed it. It’s not a magic bullet. It isn’t, but a little, but a little and a little and a little becomes a lot. And that’s the whole key is just staying with it, staying with it, staying with it, doing it day in, day out and trusting the process. And when you trust the process, the outcomes typically take care of themselves.

51:24
And I think we can all three attest to that if they were our own personal experience too, right? Without a All right, Josh, rapid fire questions. You anything before we close this out? away. Let’s go. I’m ready. I was getting ready to be ready. So here we go. Oh, look at you. Great use of the tool. All right. We always start with this one. What are you reading or what are you listening to right now for your own personal growth? Personal growth.

51:49
Personal entertainment, just read a book called The Grey Man. It was like a spy novel or is like a CIA assassin. So that’s what I’ve doing recently. I love it. We love it. is totally my tap out for five seconds to just get away from everything. What do I listen to? I listen to great podcasts like yourselves. Thank you. I, you know, one of the great things about Limitless Minds is we get to work with, I get to work with

52:19
with 10 other coaches. I happen to be the head of them. But I get to pick their brains all the time, listen to them and talk to them and bounce ideas around. that’s that’s where I get more uses talking to these other people. April is kind of like Sullivan. I think she would like the opportunity to be able to jump in and be able to pull everybody’s brain power. What is the best advice you’ve ever gotten? People don’t know unless you tell them.

52:45
when I was looking to leave IMG Academy, my father was like, you know, I was looking to get into pro baseball and he’s like, that’s great, Josh. Does anybody know? Because they think you have a really good, they look at IMG and they think you have a great job. They’re not thinking you want to leave. So you better start putting the word out there. So. That is super, super good advice. Me and April give that all the time too. Just put it out there. You just never know how the universe is going to respond. You do not know. Okay. So we always talk about big things.

53:14
and big things being your hopes, your dreams, whatever you believe is going to drive personal fulfillment. So what is a big thing that you want to accomplish here in the short term or long term? The short term is to get as many people to read this book as absolutely possible. I really do think it helps. I really believe in what I’ve written in WinToday and I really think it can help transform your life. That’s number one.

53:40
Number two is with limitless minds, our goal is to impact a billion people. So we’re well on our way. We’ve been at this now for seven plus years and we’re tripping away at that number slowly but surely, but that’s our goal is to impact a billion people. I love it. I love it. That is a big one. Yes, that’s a huge big thing. Okay. So Josh, tell everybody where they can find you, where they can buy the book, um how to connect with you, all of that really important stuff.

54:08
Yeah, the best place to find me or any information about me is my website, which is Joshua lifrack, Li, F, R, a K.com. You can also buy the book there. There’s a little click, click button there. So you can get it at Barnes and Nobles, Amazon, any of your booksellers, preorder right now. And um LinkedIn is the best place to get me. So just it’s my name, Jack will live rack again, Li, F, R, a K. And it’s not linked in and just just

54:36
Click on there, know, friend me or whatever and send me a message. Be glad to answer anything. Awesome. And then anything else that you want to wrap up with? Anything that we missed? Anything that you want to leave the listeners with? I think the biggest thing is this is coming from the world of scarcity or abundance. And I mentioned it earlier. I truly believe that if you open yourselves up, open your hearts up, open the possibilities of what is possible,

55:05
Anything is really possible. showed that in 2016. You know, our, our goal for the Chicago Cubs during that period was yes, of course to win the world series, but it was more about changing the world because we knew if we won the world series, there was going to be 5 million Cubs fans that all of a sudden looked at the world in a different way and knew anything was possible with hard work, with focus, with the right mindset and belief. ah Yes. Gives me chills. The modeling of the whole thing. It just gives me chills.

55:36
And with that, encourage you to take at least one powerful insight you heard and put it into practice. Because remember, Strategic Counsel is only effective if you put it into action. Did we spark something with this episode that you want to talk about further? Reach out to us through our website, ForthRight-People.com. We can help you customize what you have heard to move your business and make sure to follow or subscribe to Strategic Counsel on your favorite podcast platform.